Posts tagged ‘failure’

So, I was at a meeting the other day to see a presentation on radicalism. The presentation, presented by a local well known professor focused on the psychology of radicalism, examining commitment, motivation, and the role of group dynamics.

It was an interesting presentation, of which I’ll provide a quick synopsis to capture the point of this post.

Radicalization

The professor provided a quick breakdown of what radicalization means: “support/adoption of radical means to address a problem.” Of course, this required a definition of radical: “a means that is contrary to generally accepted norms and values.” From this, the professor identified two implications

The perception of radicalism is subjective to the value and importance one—and society in general—place on those norms and values.

Radicalism is a matter of degree in the willingness of one to move outside those norms and values.

The professor then equated radicalization with extreme commitment, from which he identified a theory of three factors the develop commitment:

Motivation (Individual level)

Ideological Narrative (Cultural level)

Group Dynamics (Social level)

The professor, at this point synthesized motivation down to a quest for significance. This is interesting in that the professor breaks it down as such:

The Significance Quest:

Significance loss (individual level, level of social identity)

Threat of loss

These therein introduce an uncertainty about the self, need for certainty (dissonance)

Which then provides an opportunity for significance gain and the removal of uncertainty

The significance quest then uses ideology to reinforce the goal of significance and providing the means to attain it. For example, in Islamic terrorism, the return of the global Caliphate would be the goal and the use of Jihad is the means to attain it.

Group dynamics, through persuasive ideology and charismatic leaders, provide entry of uncertain individuals into a social process that acts as a conduit for the Significance Quest.

Basically, the professor’s point was that individuals who are less successful, who feel insignificant, and who are psychologically uncertain, are more easily susceptible to radicalization. Radicalization is about self-esteem.

So where am I going with this? The professor, who has traveled extensively and conducted many interviews and studies with radicalized individuals, displayed some empirical data that was quite telling. In particular, there were two charts the professor displayed that immediately jumped out at me.

I will not provide the chart itself, by I will provide an accurate representation:

As you can see from the chart, individuals who are successful are independent, whereas those who are failures are interdependent. Let us let that sink in for a moment: success breeds independence and failure foments interdependence. It takes a village anyone?

Couple this with the second chart:

Like the first chart, this one demonstrates that those who are successful identify as individuals, whereas those who fail, tend to identify in a collective. Now, the professor was studying terrorism, so the collectives he was most interested in were religion and nationalism, but one could easily substitute ideology. In fact, especially in the Error of Obama, Obamaism is the religion because everything is based on faith, despite what the facts or reality dictates.

The Left’s NEED for Failures

These charts are extremely telling, and explain so much about how the left engages and expands its base. It explains the policies, the decisions, and the ideology. Liberalism, Socialism, and Communism have just been summed up.

Conservatives have pointed out the consistent failures of leftist ideology for years, and I have commented several times on the left’s tactic of pulling everyone down to the lowest common denominator. This tells us why; the left is made up by, and caters to, failures. Of course, not everyone on the left is a failure, but that is the target demographic because failures need others because, well, they’re failures.

This explains what the left has done to the “black community”, and why it is necessary to destroy the family unit, diminish educational and professional work habits and expectations, and center all problems on race. Failure forces interdependence, and if there is anything “successful” about liberal policies, it is that they force collective failure. Of course, this failure then forces collective identification and interdependence, which becomes a self-licking ice-cream cone as collective liberal policies breed new failure—and the cycle then continues.

I have always looked at the left as a bunch of incompetent boobs, who’ve religious zealotry to a failed ideology inherently foment failed policy after failed policy. But now I have to sit back and really question this. Is it incompetence or intentional? Can a movement possibly be wrong every time?

Sure, this starts to sound awfully Alex Jones, but Conservatives have always believed that liberal leaders intentionally looked to force popular dependence on the state, and thus on them, for survival. That is demonstrably clear just based on the last six years of food stamp rolls, unemployment, and the entire premise of Obamacare. None of these were ever intended to fix anything. In fact, the exact opposite has occurred in each case; more—not less—people are on food stamps, more—not less—people are unemployed, more—not less-people are without healthcare coverage.

The Obama Administration has been the epitome of failure. Its foreign policy has made the United States weaker, less liked, and more isolated. Its economic policy has bankrupted the treasury, hamstrung the economy, and damaged the fundamental ability to get a decent job. Race relations have plummeted as every single criticism of the Administration have been blamed on race instead of accepted on the merits of the facts. The nation has never been more divided or partisan. Class warfare, race warfare, political warfare—this Administration is destroying the fabric of the nation.

Obama’s fundamental change has been to celebrate failure, which clarifies who the radicals are in this country…

It is becoming increasingly clear that liberals are real pussies. No, seriously. Not just pussies, but really annoying sack’s of shit. Case in point, Thanksgiving.

Who the hell plans an argument, especially on Thanksgiving? More importantly, who plans an argument, but then has to get strategy advice on how to conduct the argument in the first place? If you have little confidence in your ability to hold your own ideologically, then you should probably shut the fuck up, because aside from embarrassing yourself, do you really think that if you need talking-points to start the damn fight that you’re going to be prepared to finish it when Uncle Tom (seems appropriate for the racist left) squarely plants a size 12 in basic facts and logic up your ass? Let’s look at some examples…

Of course, these are just building off of the likely, and natural, trajectory expected from Obama’s push for Obamacare during the Holidays. I suppose the previous will sort-of prepare you for the obvious, and lets be honest, any rabid liberal is likely in for a serious ideological ass-whooping tomorrow because all their rhetoric, talking points, and Administration regurgitations have demonstrably fallen on their face. This roll-out has been a complete and total failure, and it isn’t going to get better.

So I say, be the hero, be the champion in the greater family by doing what every other family member wants to do, but hasn’t had the temerity to do: walk up to that exceedingly liberal family member, wrap them up in a huge hug and say you love them, and then, step back, and knock that motherfucker out!

For many, the post 2012 elections have been one of reflection and quite a bit of frustration. To sit back and watch the train wreck—especially after having warned about the impending doom for months, nay, years—is never fun, particularly when you are on that train. There is no gratification, nor righteous dignity in being proven correct. After all, you’re on the train and have more pressing issues at hand, like survival.

But events come along the way to expose the lies and highlight the liars. Despite the claims that it was a conspiracy against the Administration, perpetuating a sea of “racist” vitriol by wannabe clansmen wrapped in the American flag while waving the Gadsden flag, there was actual, legitimate concern based on facts and common sense. The greatest disappointment from the 2012 election is how the left got away with so much racial rhetoric and never once got called out by the “legitimate” media for rampant race baiting, racial lies, and racial distortions. Really, what we witnessed was the complete and total masking of an Administrations record with claims of racism. They didn’t need to actually prove anything, they just needed the accusations to fly in order to force denials and retorts long enough to mask their failures. Obama’s campaign was the epitome of the Straw Man.

Unfortunately, as Obama’s favorite racist pastor would say, “chickens are coming home to roost.” The March job numbers were projected to be ~190,000. The honest truth of the matter is this number, in and of itself, is anemic. America needs some 300,000+ jobs to maintain population growth and retirement (the later is clearly not much of a factor anymore in the Obama economy). So when the March number came out at 88,000, it was, as Obama’s former financial advisor Austan Goolsbee said, a “punch to the gut.” It was less than half of what was projected, a massive miss. Of course, the Administrations initial knee-jerk reaction was to blame it on Obama’s Sequester, which he has worked very, very hard to Staw Man—with gleeful and dedicated help from the lapdog media—as a Republican idea. While this is incredibly ironic, it is also woefully inaccurate. No, Obama’s Sequester is not the particular economic brainchild of this Administration to be responsible for the collapse in jobs, it was actually the Obama brainchild of increasing the payroll tax and, of course, Obamacare.

This is just the latest in a long—I mean a four plus year long—malaise of poor economic indicators that are the result of poor economic decision after poor economic decision by an Administration that is either grossly incompetent or grossly complicit in handcuffing our economy to a sinking anchor of debt while, almost intentionally, undermining economic progress with atrocious fiscal policy. The real irony is that the unemployment rate went down. That’s right, another data point in the Administration’s Straw Man that the economy is coming back and that the Administration’s ideas are creating jobs. Of course, this is complete and utter bullshit. The unemployment rate dropped to 7.6% because 663,000 people STOPPED LOOKING FOR WORK. This is not new. In fact, for literally years now, the unemployment rate decline has been a result of people leaving the labor market. Of course, the Administration has been waving it’s hand and touting the rate, not the reason of decline, as evidence of their success, but this is ultimately what Obama’s economic story of “success” looks like:

This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% – the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is “improving.”

This graphic does a fantastic job of exemplifying the disconnect between propaganda of job creation with the reality of labor participation:

There have been, of course, many other Staw Men setup by the Administration as well, and—unfortunately—the deceit paid off in the election. A large proportion of youth voted for Obama, the irony of which is that Obama has financially hurt the youth of this country more than any other President in modern times. Per the Wall Street Journal:

22.9%: The unemployment rate for Americans under age 25, adjusting for the decline in the labor force since the start of the recession.

Perhaps no group has been hit harder by the recession and grinding recovery than the young. The official unemployment rate for those under age 25 is 16.2%, more than double the rate for the population as a whole. In percentage terms, unemployment has fallen far more slowly for young people than for the wider population.

Of the 663,000 that dropped out of the labor force in March, 236,000 of them were under 25. And how about that “War on Women” the left consistently pushes, facts be damned? 315,000 of the mass exodus were women.

This is, by no means, the end either. Higher taxes and intrusive, obstructive and burdensome policies will continue to prevent job growth, consumer confidence will continue to wane, and then the house of cards will tumble. The irony will be when the very fools who blindly swallowed Obama’s bait, fall into the sea of broken hopes pitched by the Chicago Jesus. The mirage is coming to an end, but it is really a shame in how many will be forced to starve in the desert because they were to naive to open their eyes and see the Straw Man for the deception that he is.

“You know, I’m a hundred percent confident that the people of Iowa and the American people will win the day on November 6th of this year when President Obama is re-elected because of his policies, because of the fact that he has brought this country out of the worst economic disaster that we faced since the Great Depression and the people of America know” – DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

The benefit of liberals is that you’ll always know what an alternative universe will look like, and here we have Snaggletooth providing the most recent window into that world. One has to, at some point, sit back and question whether this woman is really this incredibly stupid, or this incredibly dishonest. There is not a single economic metric that even remotely connects any Obama promise to economic success. Not one. In fact, the American Enterprise Institute had a recent article title, The 7 most illuminating economic charts of 2011, which shatter the Administration’s “economic success” rhetoric.

My guess is that they know, without a doubt, that they are telling the American people a massive whopper of a lie. I’m convinced Obama is not nearly as smart as liberals think he is, but he can’t be so stupid as to believe the bullshit the DNC and his re-election campaign is spewing into the ether. What I find amusing is the Administrations belief that class warfare rhetoric is going to win the day for them and the Dems in general. Yes, yes, he is a man of the people as he takes not one, but two private jets- at taxpayer expense- to Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii to stay in multi-million dollar estates. Clearly, one of us.

In truth, I love the delusion. I love that liberals actually think that this is somehow a winning argument for them. Keep it coming. Really, let it flow. Tell us that a few hundred thousand here, or a million or two there, don’t mean anything in the greater scheme of things. Go on and tell us about how crying foul over wasteful government spending is just a nagging effort in desperation, as if there are no major issues of consternation from this Administration for the American people to fret about. Really, it’s working… or maybe not.

Stepping back into reality, let’s look at who the American people are- and more importantly- how the Administration’s message is resonating with them.

Gallup conducts a survey on the political ideology of U.S. adults. This is an ongoing survey that started in 1992 and since its beginning, Conservatives have consistently outnumbered liberals 2-1. The most recent survey, done in August ’11, has 41% of U.S. adults identifying themselves as Conservative, up 4% from 2008. Likewise, only 21% of U.S. adults call themselves liberal, down 1% from 2008’s all-time high of 22%. 36% of U.S. adults identify as moderate, again down 1% from 2008. More U.S. adults identify as Conservative and that metric continues to steadily grow.

But an important component of the survey that easily gets lost is the partisan breakdown of ideology, specifically the Independents. In 2008, 30% of Independents called themselves Conservative. However, that number jumped to 35% in the August ’11 survey with self-identified liberals only making up 20% of Independents.

This Conservative Ascendency is important in that the message of the Administration is not resonating. And there is a lot of data to demonstrate this. At the end of December, Gallup conducted another survey in which they asked U.S. adults to rate their political ideaology, and the political ideology of the Presidential candidates- to include Obama- on a five point scale, with 1 being very liberal and 5 being very conservative. The average for the U.S. adults sampled was 3.3, or moderately conservative. All GOP candidates either matched the sampling (Huntsman) or were slightly to right with Michele Bachmann being the farthest to the right by 0.7 (4.0 versus 3.3). Obama was a full point to the left (2.3 versus 3.3), which means that the average American more closely identifies with the GOP candidates than with Barack Obama.

This plays out in another poll, done by Pew Research Center, but focused on economic structures rather than political ideologies. The survey looked at views of Capitalism and Socialism, and what the reaction was by different demographic groups. Dems as a group see Capitalism negatively, but it is only liberal Dems who see Socialism positively. Correction, liberal Dems and Blacks who see Socialism positively, which explains why we see the race card played so hard and so often now by the left.

In party identification, Rasmussen’s recent survey found that self-identified Republicans increased in December while self-identified Dems decreased. This is particularly interesting, though it is still very early, in generic balloting. As it sits now, according to Rasmussen, the GOP leads Dems 43% to 38% and in the Presidential race, a generic Republican beats Obama 47% to 43%.

A lot of this is based on the economy, which is the biggest concern of voters. This is followed by Healthcare, Education and Iraq, which the survey found that voters trust the GOP over the Dems on all of these issues. In fact the only issue the Dems are more trusted than the GOP is Social Security and Government ethics (Mainstream media’s whitewash of Solyndra, Fast & Furious, and the DOJ seems to be paying off).

Which brings us back to the rhetoric of the Administration. Class warfare sounds great to partisan ideologues, but it rarely stands the test against actual facts. Again, AEI’s The 7 most illuminating economic charts of 2011 do a great job of demonstrating just how much damage this Administration has done to the economy. Obama has consistently tried to put the failings of his economic policies on Bush, but this one graphic best reflects the failings of this Administration.

Obama can talk all he wants about the eeeevvviiilllllllllllll Republicans, but the facts remain: this Administration has been an epic failure, and the American people know this.

A quick note as more will follow, but this cements Obama’s position as the second coming of Jimmy Carter. Obama, sensing the hardship of supporting an ally regardless of the consequences, is abandoning Hosni Mubarak. Egypt, under Mubarak has been a staunch US ally for 30 plus years and it has been Mubarak that has kept peace in the Levant between Israel and Egypt. With him gone, and the Muslim Brotherhood in power, then the peace between those two states is all but at an end. The Muslim Brotherhood is already calling for war with Israel and Tehran, rightfully so, are taunting US abandonment of Cairo and welcoming a growing Islamic wave in the Middle East.

Israel is shocked at what a fair-weather ally the US has turned into, and frankly, and other ally right now should be extremely concerned about the commitment of this Administration to honor alliances. The message that this sends will be extremely damaging, particularly in places where we’re extremely dependent on ally support, in particular, Pakistan.